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>> i'm jim cramer. welcome to my world.

you need to get in the game. firms are going to go out of business and he's nuts! they're nuts. they know nothing. i like to say there's a bull market somewhere. "mad money" you can't afford to miss it. hey, i'm cramer. welcome to "mad money." welcome to cramerica. other people want to make friends. i'm trying to save you money. my job is not just to entertain, but teach you how things can happen. call me at 1-800-743-cnbc. look, we learned something vital about the stock market this very morning. something we have to remember always, even as ultimately the averages got completely pole axed by the end of the day. the dow sinking 216 points. the s&p giving up 1.83%. and nasdaq declining, it was the worst day around here in three months. but what did we learn about this morning? because that's what i want to focus on. well, we learned there's always a better time to sell than into the teeth of a sell-off. like the sell-off we had last week or the one we had toward

the closing bell. when the dow fell an astounding 150 points on almost no volume in the last hour of the market. last week we had a two-day affair that took my breath away. every bit as grim as the one that settled in at the end of today's session. it's a misreading of the federal reserve minutes, that the fed is about to tighten that will rock the consumer. that sequestration and the higher gas prices and the payroll tax, enough of a pain to deliver real hurt. no matter that the fed minutes were a month old and the world changes quickly and ben bernanke adjusts with them. it was about done to keep the rates low through that bond buying program. it was just the opposite. the next day was no better with a series of bears coming on

networks shouting get out now to anyone who would listen. given that we have plenty of international worries which seem to accelerate last week, including newfound weakness in china, the sell everything now call seemed prophetic. especially some who articulated said they were bullish and the sell call felt right. right into the teeth of the ugliness the market continued to soar and it continued into the beautiful opening where the dow was 80 points higher. some 200 points, keep that number in mind above where the sales calls were made last week. it was a much better chance to sell. even though it came and went, it gave you a broad, loud, large opportunity to get higher prices on the go out if you wanted to take some profits and cash out for the moment. that's something i said i can't blame anyone for doing last week. if they're as nervous as some of you said you were in your calls to the show. we got a bunch of them.

sure, we gave back everything, but that's not what matters. what matters is that if you truly thought that the market was too high to begin with or you were worried about italy or sequestration or gasoline prices or weakened china, you could have sold stocks at a much better moment had you waited for thursday's selling to subside. does it really matter? yes, it does for several reasons. first, a reminder that nobody ever made a dime from panicking. the reasons why the market was getting hit diminished rather rapidly. hey, look, the same thing could happen again tomorrow afternoon when bernanke speaks or to stem the late-day selling into the closing bell. you don't take action to sell into the teeth of a sell-off. second, one of the reasons that the market continues to send people to the wrong signals is there are so many traders dominating the action. it's worthwhile to suddenly go into all cash because someone said it makes sense for him may not be right for you, but it breeds a classic buy high, sell

low mentality that will keep you from thinking that stocks are anything but a mug's game. how much better would it be to wait to sell into today's strong opening, when this was no panic. instead, initially european inspired euphoria to sell into. how much better would it have been to take advantage of the downturn last week and buy buy buy some stocks that are immune to the noise. package goods like like colgate, conagra, and then proceeded to run incredibly high right after the sell-off abated. if macy's had a one-day sale of martha stewart merchandise, you run from macy's because someone said that martha stewart's merchandise feels wrong here? if that's your plan, you don't need me. you need a professional shopper. put that shopper to work if the market tanks after bernanke talks tomorrow. you can say the better window to buy into like at the end of the day.

well, i'll tell you a story. because two years after i started the experiment that is thestreet.com, which i still write for every day, i was particularly nervous because the market had been weak and the fed said it didn't see any need to cut rates. i don't write the headlines but i penned a piece that was headed get out now. not unlike what we heard last night. it was emotional. it was all about the need to feel better, seemed right. because hey, the market was going down. boy, did i feel a weight lifted off of my shoulders when i sent that article in. sure enough, the markets started rising almost from the moment i wrote get out now. like last thursday. it turns out that the fed was calling an emergency meeting to cut rates. it felt the need to talk about the system. they heard, they saw, they did react.

my article was wrong. this is a hedge fund, after karen cramer said to get her a soft pretzel and a diet coke, she reversed my sales and put on longs to take advantage of a very big dip. by the time i got back, she was reading the catalog, and reminded me that nobody made a dime panicking, and saying we'll get a much better chance to sell later. she wasn't crazy about the market. she wanted to be able to buy at a good price and sell at a better price. she had actually borrowed a huge amount of money on margin. called margin to get very long. meaning to buy lots more stock than we had the cash to pay for. we had to borrow money from the broker. a couple days later she peeled off the margin stock and then made up for the sales that felt right and in fact were wrong and bad at that moment. well, this was an incredibly painful lesson for me. it was a time stamped mistake

that was similar to the error i saw many people making into the teeth of the selling on thursday. i was gratified that she didn't make me wear the post it. that's cramer speak for having to put a post it note on your forehead with the stock symbols of what you got wrong and then walking around 100 wall street, the big building where our office was at that time. yeah, taking it outside with the post it. maximum humiliation. so in retrospect, i had to deal with the embarrassment and of course the appropriateness of the tens of thousands of readers mocked me for making that just get out now call. it was foolish based on the concept it felt good and would have been better had i said hey, listen, i don't like the market and in a rally i want to unload stuff. now, this down could continue if ben bernanke says the wrong things tomorrow on the hill.

plus, sequestration woes will scare people into selling their stocks. you can count on the politicians to scare the heck out of us and to make each other sound horrible. it's just pathetic. keep in mind, it might be another two-day selling affair and the same rules apply. selling into this panic to me seems as wrong headed as selling into last week's panic. i would now wait until the pullback subsides. you get another move to unload some stock in order to cut your exposure. again if you're concerned about the litany of woes upon us. the bottom line is clear here. you can be spared the wearing of the post it on your forehead as i was. you so have to own the fact if you're negative, even if you feel the need to shout the go into cash call from the rooftop, the equivalent of get out now, there's a better time to sell than in a panic. you only need to learn from my egregious mistake because the reason to sell as i felt in

october of 1998 is not as i felt now. wait until the emotion dies down and then do some selling. who knows, maybe you can buy back what you sold high at a lower price into weakness tomorrow morning. sure wouldn't shock me with the newfound volatility playing havoc as it hasn't since november of last year. let's go to jim in florida. jim? >> caller: crazy horse in florida, boo-yah to you, jim. we need a spot for you on mount rushmore. >> okay. it's jammed up there, but that's all right. north by northwest. >> caller: with the housing market the way it's going, i'm looking positive on it. i want to get a couple of housing stocks in my portfolio. i'm looking at mas or xhb. >> let's understand the housing stocks have declined 8%. masco said very good things when it reported and it's come back

down. lowe's said good things about kitchen and bath. i think masco is right. i think the market seems to think that housing is done. i think the housing -- whole housing turn is in the early innings and it's way too early to leave. i like your idea of masco. it seems right to me. that's a better time to sell than in the panic we got in the last hour or on thursday. please don't sell because it feels right. i'll spare you the post it if you do it. "mad money" will be right back. coming up -- stocks of the future. the winners today aren't always the chosen ones of tomorrow. don't let your portfolio get stuck in the past. there's a new class of companies that have caught the eye of the next generation that could propel their stocks to new highs. cramer reveals the names next. and later, fuel fight. 10, 20, 30, gas prices are up

more than 40 cents in the past month. what's behind the rise? and is there a stock that can help relieve your pump pain? you won't want to miss what cramer has to say. all coming up on "mad money." don't miss a second of "mad money." follow @jimcramer on twitter. have a question? tweet cramer #madtweets. send jim an e-mail to madmoney@cnbc.com or give us a call at 1-800-743-cnbc. miss something? head to madmoney@cnbc.com.

well, everybody is fretting about the looming budget sequester, not to mention the fate of the consumer in the post payroll holiday and sky high gasoline world. it's my job to remind you that some companies are having terrific sales here. that means they can buck the trend even if worst is happening. the reason? i'm calling it the f. scott fitzgerald factor.

companies that depend on the rich can thrive in any environment. they won't pull in their horns, just because of higher gasoline prices or even higher tax rates and we have to monitor this behavior. that's why tonight i wanted to introduce a new index of stocks that "mad money" has created, an index designed to measure the strength of the high end aspirational consumer. and in honor of fitzgerald we are calling it the gatsby index. if you read "the great gatsby" in high school or maybe after, then you know that what we're talking about here is famed wealth as much as real wealth. but here on "mad money" we don't care about new money or old money. mind you, before we delve into this newly created gatsby index we aren't recommending these stocks. we are simply using them to track the behavior of the rich and the drivers out there to measure how much buying power they have. so who belongs to the gatsby index?

tonight we're rolling this one out in two pieces. we start with the high end retailers and then after the break we'll talk about the pricey gatsby food plays. we have ralph lauren, michael kors, nordstroms's and lululemon. i dropped money there for pants, a shirt and a yoga mat. nordstrom's, a high end department store, i love mine at the short hills mall if there was one, said they saw no sign of the deteriorating consumer. there's nothing at this point that would suggest any change in our customers behavior, even as when i read the commentary about the call it said that there was a radical change. that was inaccurate. see, fitzgerald was right. the rich really are different. at a time when other retailers are faltering, nordstrom had

same-store sales up 6.3% for the quarter. nordstrom's is thriving here because it know how to harness the fitzgerald factor. this is a company that understands customer service west egg style which is a very important differentiator to high end. the rich are different and they expect to be treated differently too. plus, nordstrom is a well-run business. it has 230 stores across the united states and it has a cheaper line of nordstrom outlets and they have a fabulous brand of shirts. nordstrom's brand of shirts and pants that everybody really does seem to like very much. their private label. right now the company is investing heavily in expanding into canada. they plan to go build many more nordstrom rack locations. here they come, steve tanger, with 24 openings expected this year. they intend to roll out the first store in new york city. that's not for a while now. but more important they're spending big on the nordstrom

website. nordstrom's is moving aggressively into mobile. last year, mobile devices accounted for a fifth of the total sales and it grew at a 31% clip last quarter. it can help the stock to continue to power higher in a world where everyone gets 3 and 4-g. the next gatsby component, how about ralph lauren. maybe this isn't the best example. this is the premiere high end apparel brand. nothing says preppy like polo. they earned 240 a share. these companies are doing better even if their stocks aren't. and it gave very healthy guidance for 2013. this is what happens when you have a brand that's perceived to be on the high end of things. the money flows in because people cannot resist a little conspicuous consumption. this can be a perilous game. look at coach. they're a dog because they're

widely perceived as having fallen behind on the style curve with its merchandise. i don't think ralph lauren will fall prey because they have staying power and they have some great merchants and designers. ralph lauren is a master of his brands so there's chaps at the lower tier, polo in the middle, black label and purple label at the ultra high end. like nordstrom's, they're capturing the power of mobile devices. last month, mobile was up a whopping 5% year over year. after all who doesn't want to be buy things straight from their smartphone or tablet? it's the ultimate shopping experience for the haves. next up, lulu lemon. a retailer that caters to people who can afford $100 for anti-stink pants. when you wear their clothing it puts you in a rarefied category.

they laid out why the growth is far from over at the recent icr conference. right now lulu has only 130 stores in the u.s. they can double it to 250 locations and i think that's a low ball estimate. we know lulu lemon is doing well right now because they're actually hiring a lot of people. this stock has pulled more than 14 points from the high. but if the rich keep shopping there and the market turns, lulu will probably turn with it courtesy of the f. scott fitzgerald effect. last but not least, we have michael kors. this is a classic gatsby play. kors is a high-end maker of accessories, especially handbags. unlike coach, they're seeing remarkable strength right now. these guys do make a product that people are willing to pay extra for. now, kors just reported back on february 12th and they blew away the numbers. we're talking about a 23 cent earning beat off a 41 cent basis with a much better than expected

revenues that soared 70% year over year. they're not seeing mark downs. their customer base is actually responding better to their products. michael kors has 297 retail location. they increased the store count by 30% last year. ever since the quarter -- ever since -- every single quarter since kors came public they're able to achieve sales growth of at least an astounding 35%. no one has this growth. this well-managed business with great growth and gross margins are going higher. kors has become the new face of luxury in this market. that's not necessarily something you can quantify very easy, but even though it's two or three -- i still think you can bank on it to drive the stock price higher when the market gets better. kors has been crushed of late though, through no fault of its own. last week there was a secondary offering from kors himself, which was announced when the

stock was trading a little below $65, but priced at $61.50 that's weighing on the stock like a handbag it will of lead ever since. it's trying to find the footing. as all the stock is digested and i bet it will go higher because the earnings were the best of the group. fitzgerald was right at a time when we constantly hear about the consumers are being squeezed by higher gas prices or higher income taxes for the wealthy. the companies that cater to the truly rich, maybe they want to seem more rich and they're hanging in there much better than you think, hence the gatsby index. nordstrom's, ralph lauren, lulu lemon and michael kors. stay tuned after the break and i'll tell you who else belongs here. these are not recommendations to buy but an index to gauge the strength of the rich and exactly how different they are from the rest of us. mike in new jersey, mike? >> caller: boo-yah! it's a three-ring boo-yah.

how you doing, jim? >> that's take the cake boo-yah for 2013. how can i help? >> caller: my question is on the second long term play crocs. i'm looking at it, i like the enterprise value about $1.1 billion. minimal, no debt, $300 million of cash in short term investments. look like it's trading at a discount. looks like it's established in the u.s. and internationally. >> i think you have done a lot of homework. i think your reasoning makes sense. you did say it was speculative and the company has had a kind of roller coaster earnings pattern. as long as you recognize there's a time to get on and a time to get off like ecclesiastes, you're in good shape. like fitzgerald said, the rich are different from you and me. the high-end retailers like ralph lauren and lulu lemon are in high demand. after the break i'll try to save you more money.

coming up, times are a-changing. cramer has more fresh-faced companies that could be setting themselves up to be big names for years to come. next up, the greasy spoon and neighborhood grocer are becoming a thing of the past. but these rising stars are filling their shoes. find out if they should fill your portfolio. uh, i'm in a timeout because apparently riding the dog like it's a small horse is frowned upon in this establishment! luckily though, ya know,

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on a day when the market was way down big time by an errant italian election and of course worries that washington might again allow the economy to blow up by not replacing sequestration with something less draconian we have to put the selling in perspective. the consumers are struggling with high gas prices and the higher taxes for the wealthy. last week there was a ton of fretting that the fed might take its foot off the gas pedal. and let interest rates go higher. although i think the worries were misplaced since they're based on month old information. if congress doesn't do something, the sequester is going to hurt. no doubt, not denying it. things are decidedly mixed out there. i'm not against anyone taking profits, but please, i want you to do that into strength, not weakness. there's a better time to sell and nobody ever made a dime panicking.

how, if you believe the worst, the companies -- not stocks -- companies seem to be able to buck the trend of a weakened consumer. that's why i decided to put together the gatsby index, based on the idea that companies that attract aspirational consumers, people willing to pay up for a better experience can do better in this environment. these are places to look as the stocks go down. i'm not talking about companies which make products that only a millionaire can afford. but i mean companies that are synonymous with a wealthiest class of customer. you have to give gatsby a ton of credit for being a keen observer of human behavior. to borrow fitzgerald's words, the rich are different. not just because they have more money. and earlier i laid out the nordstrom, ralph lauren, kors and if the rich are different, than we need a rich people supermarket, whole foods.

a rich man's casual dining, experience, that's panera's, and starbucks. these are all companies that can rise above commodity costs or competition. and probably because they know how to make you feel like you're a member of the elite. that's what it is about. the idea here is that you walk into a nordstrom's or a whole foods and it's the shopping equivalent of being invited to a party at gatsby's huge mansion. soon to be depicted by leonardo dicaprio, if you're not forced to read it in school. let's start with panera bread. i know panera is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of high society. they have high society stocks out there. but it is the gatsby of quick serve space, especially in comparison to mcdonald's or buffalo wild wings. unlike panera, chipotle is a serial disappointer.

but they serve terrific sandwiches, soups and salads all the time. kind of like a treasure hunt. and they have the really good model down. they have created an atmosphere that keeps people coming back for more with tremendous customer loyalty. which is why they have the ability to raise prices without getting much push back from the customers. that's a gatsby like quality. last year the earnings per share grew at a 20% clip. for 10 of the last 12 quarters the same store sales have increased by 5% or better. they're best in class when it comes to consistency. the rich like that plus they're increasing the store count by 8% a year. right now you're getting it for a steal. it's an aspirational story. only a tiny bit higher than its growth rate although obviously this market, everything is going down. it has pulled back of late.

but i think the stock has to bounce back because of the gatsby factor. i think they have an easier time bouncing back when the selling is over. how about the next component, starbucks? we have one of the most consistent growth stories under the leadership of howard shultz. they're expanding all over the world, profiting from middle classes in places like china and india. call it the middle classification. china can become the second largest market. they have massive room to expand in the people's republic. even china is full of aspirational coffee drinkers. and more importantly, underlying growth trends remain strong. same store sales are up 6%. and that's global. and solid of course to every region except for europe of course. the company also reaffirmed guidance for 2013. this is a global story as you have more people with money worldwide, they're going to behave more and more like their conspicuously consuming counterparts here in america.

how do you say triple venti cappuccino in mandarin? you can follow along at actionalertsplus.com, co-managed by stephanie link. and whole foods. you know this story. whole foods is the largest retailer of natural and organic foods out there, with some 340 stores across the united states, canada and the u.k. when you shop at whole foods it's -- well, sometimes you pay through the nose, but the prices aren't that bad. you do so gladly because you know everything has gotten the good housekeeping seal of approval. the stock has been crushed lately after they reported what seems a very disappointing quarter back on february 13th. whole foods beat the street's earnings estimates by a penny but it was considered to be a low quality beat, driven by lower than expected costs, and

same store sales growth came in at 7.2% and it plummeted down to 87 and change. $84.50 today. whole foods did maintain the guidance for 2013, but with this kind of growth stock, investors were looking for them to raise the guidance. disappointing same sale sales indicate a slow down. don't write off whole foods just yesterday. they're a very fast grower. they didn't cut the guidance. plus they have a pipeline of 85 new stores in development. this is the highest level since march of 2008. whole foods can rebound with a vengeance here. it's still the jay gatsby of the supermarket business. a few months from now, you might end up kicking yourself if you don't take advantage of the pull back. this was the worst chart i saw in book other than the gold miners. it is hideous. so it might not be done going down. it needs to explain itself better. it's got to explain itself why things weren't better this last quarter.

as for now, it is the achilles heel of the gatsby index. here's the bottom line. companies that appeal to aspirational consumers have the ability to rise above the indicators. that's why we've created this index to monitor it. with lulu lemon and now panera bread, starbucks and whole foods representing the high end plays that should be able to thrive when things get better. we're not endorsing the stocks. we are creating this index to keep track of them. we'll monitor it as the best way of seeing how different the rich really are from the rest of us. tom in wisconsin, tom? >> caller: hey, jim, thanks for taking my call. >> my pleasure, tom. >> caller: roundie's, i made some money on it and now it tanked. is it a buy again? >> no. this is one we went out with. we said it might be good and then we said it wasn't. we made a mistake. and you know what?

we can continue to pay for that mistake, but the point is that unlike almost everybody out there, we owned it and said we got it wrong. it's still wrong. it was a mistake to recommend. i thought that things were better there than they turned out to be. the rich are still spending. they're spending at, ralph lauren, nordstrom's and michael kors and eating at panera and starbucks and whole foods. that's not the point of gatsby. go read the book. i'm not telling you to buy the stocks. i'm helping you see how different the rich are from the rest of us and why high taxes, gasoline prices, china, italy, sequestration don't seem to be hurting their sales enough that i think you have to avoid their stocks altogether. don't move. "lightning round" is up next.

"lightning round" is sponsored by td ameritrade. >> it is time, it is time for "lightning round." buy buy buy, so play this sound and then "lightning round" is over. are you ready? time for the "lightning round." start with erica in georgia.

erica? >> caller: hey, jim. i love your show. >> oh, thank you, erica. >> caller: quick question, what are your thoughts about cxw stock? you know, we discovered this is going contract to contract. let's go to mark in new york. new york? >> caller: mark michelle from new york. >> excellent. >> caller: emc. >> i do not like emc. i did not like it last quarter. sell the stock. let's go to jeff in florida. jeff? >> caller: yes. >> jeff? >> caller: my question is aflac stock? >> no, i like travelers more. i like aig if it gets to $35. let's do that. let's go to dovy in new york. >> caller: jimbo, big boo-yah to you in rockland, new york. >> nearby. i love it. >> caller: i've got aires -- >> i like u.s. air a lot.

anybody in the leasing business for airplane is good. southwest is good. i've gotten behind it because of the consolidation. albert in iowa. >> caller: hi, jim. a big cyclones boo-yah to you from des moines, iowa. >> my man, we were out at the university of iowa. we had a great time. how can i help? >> caller: my ticker symbol is pfg -- >> somebody downgraded that to a sell. this is an okay company. i like others more. i detailed that i like metlife more for instance. i don't want to necessarily recommend that stock. but should not be a sell. let's go to yonos in illinois. >> caller: yeah, jim, hees. >> i tend to like -- look, the group is coming in. i have been recommending manitowoc as a breakup play because i believe that it can split into well, let's say

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why is gasoline so expensive? why are we paying much more at the pump versus the actual price of oil, given the glut of crude in this very country? do we need senate investigations? is it like when enron organized to keep energy from california? like the run that took the futures to $14? even if it was a glut of natural gas that's beginning to form. look, it sure is tempting to believe that. we know from data that there has been an increase in the counts of who hold gasoline speculation, and at the end of the day, an oil trader and my colleague at realmoney.com articulated it on cnbc last week.

speculation has exacerbated the whole gasoline equation. the real issue here, the conundrum is that we have oil in all the wrong places in this country. a tremendous mismatch of refinery capacity and that, not speculation, but plus a saudi arabian recent cutback in production are keeping prices higher than seems logical to us. currently oil production has gone up courtesy of a technology revolutions led by core labs for mapping, novarco for equipment and halliburton for services. eog is leading to get more crude out of the ground, but the problem is we don't have the major pipe line to get it to the refinery complexes. there are bottlenecks all over the place, including cushing, oklahoma, the hub which has kept so much crude from reaching the gulf refineries, and they're being set off the marginal very

high brent crude price feed stock, not our lower feed stock price. hence, the lack of advantage from our own low priced oil. we're not using it to refine. well, in some cases we are. some cheaper domestic oil is getting to some refineries, while other refineries have spent billions upgrading the equipment to handle high sulphur crude. hence, why some are making fortunes here so they can get their hands on precious oil. these companies have the right to sell the refined product anywhere. it is, alas, a global market and these refineries sell to the highest bidder. they put it on ships to markets that are priced off the more expensive brent crude and they can make more money than they could selling it here. all this domestic oil ends up doing next to nothing to bring down the price of gasoline. seven years ago we were a net importer of gasoline and now a

net exporter. if that gasoline could be kept here, we can lower the price at the pump. how can you demand that? listen, guys, you can't send it overseas? how can it be moved from the gulf to the east or the west when we don't have the pipeline to transport it? most of the shale oil is super light, but much of the gulf refinery capacity was handling heavy canadian crude, because they didn't believe that the keystone pipeline would be a political issue. they didn't believe that any president would want to stop the pipeline if it could make us more energy independent. those were two important policy goals of washington. so the refineries are set up for heavy canadian oil when we wish they were set up for the light american oil. what a mismatch. we know you can transport that by ship from the gulf to the refineries that can use it on the east coast because they handle that kind of crude. because of the jones act, it costs too much to ship. ships carrying from one domestic port to another, must be shipped in american built tankers with american crews. these days though most ships are

built in south korea and the shipping is done by norwegians during superstorm sandy, the president suspended that act. that's why the prices were lower in the east, but the law is still on the books and when it ended, the jones act came back in force. that's no economic reason for this these days other than to protect a few domestic jobs, but the union would fight the appeal tooth and nail. no one will take this issue on though. you might see a real rise in tanker ship companies like nordic american if it happened but don't hold your breath. unions are too strong. now, we know that many of the major oil companies and transporters of crude are working to solve these bottlenecks. some of the big railroad companies have developed huge oil shipping businesses, although a shortage of tanker cars trying to be made by trinity is weighing on even that infrastructure work. another problem why gasoline is so high.

once the rail lines are completed there is a possibility that the price at the pump can come down as the rival oil bakken crude could go to the east coast refineries, which is currently being imported here at higher prices. and we know the refinery outages can keep the prices higher. they have had outages. we won't have a shot at getting oil prices down until the keystone pipeline is approved and we complete the linkage of cheaper oil to the refiners in the east. it needs to get to the west too but the permitting is so awful in the west. that's probably an impossibility. there's one place where the correct type of oil could be linked with correct refineries, and that's california, where monteray and kern counties have the largest untapped shale oil in the country, but good luck getting permits for those fields. the new 12 liter nat gas truck engines being produced by cummins could be the big game changer as 25% of the imported oil is turned into diesel truck

fuel. this engine will only make the case better as the year unfolds. i like the stock very much. also important might be the converter kits that allow diesel and natural gas to be used together for trucks. those are made by an outfit called peak fuel solutions. no, you can't own that, but it is owned by chesapeake and the brainchild of the now deposed ceo aubrey mcclendon. both need the infrastructure network to become feasible. hey, we need more gas stations. a real and competitive fuel to oil-based diesel lowering it for you and me at the pump. the good news here is that only job creating pipelines and job creating natural gas station construction and job creating engine making factories stand in the way of the bottleneck and lower gasoline prices for you and me. the bad news -- our current president does not seem to favor bringing it down at the pump.

he's not pushing it very hard. these are fossil fuels in the end. here's the bottom line. until president obama makes a push for natural gas vehicles, says yes to the keystone, and unless the saudis begin to pump more oil to lower the price of brent crude, something they won't do since they curtailed production, it is getting used to the higher gasoline prices as the world uses more oil. even as we alas are using less. the oil is in the wrong places, the refinery is in the wrong places. we don't have enough infrastructure and it looks like never the twain shall meet. "mad money" is back after this. ♪

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betting line is there will be no sequester or there will be a solution for the end of march when it's really expected to kick in. that's right. despite the four-days to armageddon rap, the stocks that have been going higher or hanging in there, notably the defense stocks would indicate a deal could happen soon. even as we know that one isn't currently in the work. how can i give you this relatively optimistic picture? because the stocks are telling me to. everyone knows that defense companies are hit the worst by the sequester, but last wednesday the philly defense index hit a new high. and stocks that performed well last year, raytheon and northrop grumman, they all rallied. and it will be the shipyards

that build the smaller ships like huntington engels that have to be hurt by the sequestration. how will it affect the whole economy? larry kudlow is the man in the know and the impact is incredibly small according to kudlow. you can see it on cnbc.com. first, $44 billion is taken out, not the 80-plus billion. it's one quarter of 1% of the gdp. let's not forget that sequestration doesn't kill anything. even if larry wishes some things could be shut down and sometimes so do i. isn't there a program we can do without? how about the endless defense of germany and japan and how we're geared toward fighting the russians, how about the fact that our soldiers in korea are held hostage? no. i'm adamant there should be no increases in taxes. been there, did that. except for the need to end the loophole that turns the high rate into capital gains that's just ridiculous. they have more influence in

washington. and despite the scare mongering by the white house, many of the cuts seem like they create inconvenience through furlough. air delays, national park closures and food inspections i wish they would post the furloughs all at once, so i can be sure i don't schedule vacations that week and i can stay home and eat packaged foods while watching netflix. the democrats should demand that they pay ordinary money on hedge funds. in the interim though the stocks are saying we should be more worried about ben bernanke's testimony on the hill tomorrow at 10:00 than anything else coming from washington. i'm going with what the defense stocks are saying. they can at least over the intermediate term tend to be dead right. stick with cramer.

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